Relationships between the 95-year-old Proposal on the Private Law Code and the Territorial Changes of Hungary

Abstract

not accepted (nor discussed) by the Parliament, because, inter alia, it was feared that the unity of private law still existed among Hungary and the territories were disannexed through the Treaty of Trianon, would have been broken. Although great changes did not occur in the fields of law concerned by the Proposal neither in Czechoslovakia nor in Romania and Yugoslavia, its acceptance and thereby the effacement of the customary law would have raised the legal certainty of Hungary to a higher level. Furthermore, the unification of private law would have been implemented more effectively by a private law code in force, following the expected boundary changes. From 1938 to 1941, when Hungary regained significant parts of its previously disannexed territories, the Government adopted several decrees in order to extend the scope of Hungarian private law, in possession of the general authorisation of the Parliament. This solution posed many difficulties, especially in Northern Transylvania, where the provisions in force of the Austrian Civil Code were still applied. Several sections of the Proposal became the parts of private law through the judicial practice, therefore it had somewhat role in the unification of private law, not as a code, but a legal source. The courts of the territories returned to Hungary through the Second Vienna Award referred to it in their judgements, until these parts of the country remained under Hungarian supremacy. The role of the Proposal did not end in parallel with the cessation of the civil era, when Hungary lost again the reannexed territories, namely it served as a starting point in preparation of the Civil Code adopted in 1959.